Forum:Appearances
OK, maybe I'm the only person who thinks this, but I find the appearance charts at the bottom of each character page to be clunk and taking up way too much space. I am working on something similar to what Lostpedia (one of our sister sites) has, and will post it when I'm close to finished. If you're curious, you can look at my edit history. Willo 17:39, 22 January 2009 (UTC) : There's a couple of problems with the new templates you've made. : First, they are insanely huge in size. One of those templates is around 111KB long, which is crazy, and to have 7 on the page will take up a lot of bandwith on the server. : Also, the charts remove a lot of valuable info. For example, not every character is catalogued, like the current templates provide for. Also, they only cover seasons, and not Expanded Universe things such as Novels, Comics, Day Zero, The Rookie etc. : I just think it would be easier to stick with what we have rather than going through every character page and replacing perfectly good templates. As I know a few contributors around here have said in the past, "If it aint broke, don't fix it!" --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 18:17, 22 January 2009 (UTC) :: Willo the charts would be excellent for the Season Pages in my opinion. I love them, very professional work. But if Simon is right, and you wish to replace the Appearances Templates from the bottom of character articles, I agree why we couldn't do that (they would take up more space in any case). 20:08, 22 January 2009 (UTC) ::: I suggest going over to Lostpedia and seeing how they work. It's really quite ingenious. ::: No, This would not go on every character page. Willo 20:14, 22 January 2009 (UTC) I didn't mean that they would go on every character page, just that from what you had originally said I interpreted that the bottom of the page templates would be removed and these just used, which to me does not seem viable. --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 20:17, 22 January 2009 (UTC) :: The short reply would be "but we're not Lostpedia". However I looked, and I noticed that the character articles there don't have an appearances area. They just have their seasons in the infobox, and at the bottom templates with "related links" and stuff. I'm not seeing anything ingenious? It seems I have to go out of my way to check a character's appearances, as it's not located on their individual page. :: Willo can you explain more explicitly the plan? I think we just aren't following what's up. 20:19, 22 January 2009 (UTC) ::: If you click a link in the seasons part of the infobox, it will take you to that character on the appearance template. Try it. Willo 20:24, 22 January 2009 (UTC) That's a bit more effort to undertake than with our appearances template, which does not need to be redirected to a certain section of a different page. --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 20:29, 22 January 2009 (UTC) : Yeah, I'm not seeing any benefit of this, either. Plus it really seems to slow my browser down. --Proudhug 20:42, 22 January 2009 (UTC) Me too, I think due to the massive size of the files as I mentioned above. --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 20:45, 22 January 2009 (UTC) : I agree. But certainly we can make use of these on the Season # articles and stuff like Main characters, no? 21:38, 22 January 2009 (UTC) :: I have redone the code for season one to be much slimmer and easier to use. The average user should be able to edit it now without problems. Take a look. 19:36, 1 February 2009 (UTC) Definitely seems better. The other redlinked ones will follow suit too? I'd like to bring up my idea again that they be utilized on the Season # articles and content pages like Main characters, even if there is an open debate about other uses. 19:51, 1 February 2009 (UTC) : I'm still not clear on what exactly the use of this is. --Proudhug 22:53, 1 February 2009 (UTC) :: I see it as a visual supplement for the aforementioned pages. The style is a little foreign here but it will be familiar to users from other wikis and may draw a few to edit. I don't propose they should replace anything currently in use. 05:39, 2 February 2009 (UTC) Season five is complete. There should be some discussion as to what characters should/should not be listed, as well as where they should go. I'll get Season 7 so far finished and then move to season six. 19:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC) : I can kinda see how this might be interesting to have in chart form, but am I the only one who is uncomfortable with this foreign visual style? I'm thinking it wouldn't be too difficult to come up with something that's a little more visually appealing, and also consistent with Wiki 24's style. Or alternatively, I think that the whole thing be combined into one large diagram. Rather than be split up into several small charts, one for each season, I think it would be much more useful and interesting to have one large diagram which combines all of the seasons into one, and also includes EU items. I created something similar years back on Memory Alpha, illustrating the timeline of the Star Trek universe and how each TV series related to each other as well as the known life spans of each of the main characters. Check it out . /en/wiki/Image:Timeline.png here. I think a large chart of all the important characters illustrating every one of their appearances would be a really neat feature to the site. For purposes of updating, an image would likely not be a good idea, but I'm sure we can come up with a large table of some sort. Thoughts? --Proudhug 22:04, 2 February 2009 (UTC) :: As far as the visual style, that can be debated. I don't find it tacky, though I think the color scheme should be changed to better fir with this site. As far as one diagram, that would be very large and not very helpful. Plus, you'd have to limit it, even with only 30-some main characters, it would get very messy very quick. More reasonable (but again, like the ones I made before) could be something like This? 23:27, 2 February 2009 (UTC) ::: Proudhug I think the colors of Willo's original charts can be easily adapted for this wiki. Additionally, making one huge chart seems out of the question to me... have you seen what it's like to edit just the individual charts one at a time? It's nearly impossible to navigate through all that wikitext, so imagine multiplying that by 7 times and possibly more (meaning, we need the subsection Edit option). Canada Dry your second proposal looks like a separate project altogether, not something that could replace your other charts (Btw, is it alright if I still call you Willo?) 12:17, 3 February 2009 (UTC) :::: Let's talk colors. Which ones need to be changed/adjusted? 15:54, 3 February 2009 (UTC)